Jim Cramer "Would Haphazardly Make Trades" While Running His Hedge Fund, Lash Out At And Then Firmly Embrace Colleagues

This is probably going to come as a shock but making questionable calls, flipping the fuck out and just acting like a crazy person in general is not something Cramer simply picked when he started doing TV. Sure, he's perfected things over the last few years (Bear, Dykstra, what what) but the JC you see today is a craft Uncle Jim has been honing since his days at Cramer Berkowitz, the hedge fund he founded after leaving Goldman Sachs. Memoirs of a Minyan, new book by Todd Harrison, who served as head trader and president at the firm, devotes five chapters (out of eighteen) to reflecting on the harrowing experience that was working alongside Jimbo, now that he's several years removed and is ready to start the healing process.

"He would haphazardly make trades...We'd go from hugging each other to screaming at each other," Harrison recalls. "It was so intense every day." Harrison writes about a memorable Cramer meltdown after one tech-sector buy, on Brocade Communications, resulted in the hedge fund losing a modest amount of money. Keyboards were being smashed, "keys were flying, spit was flying," and Cramer was yelling like a madman, said Harrison. Efforts to calm him down only resulted in more aggression, including Cramer accusing Harrison of not caring whether the firm made money, he said. Fed up, Harrison got up to leave, which prompted Cramer to throw a water bottle at him.